They had pictures hung on the walls- mainly Washingtons
and Lafayettes, and battles, and Highland Marys, and one called "Signing
the Declaration." There was some that they called crayons, which one
of the daughters which was dead made her own self when she was only fifteen
years old. They was different from any pictures I ever see before; blacker,
mostly, than is common. One was a woman in a slim black dress, belted small
under the arm-pits, with bulges like a cabbage in the middle of the sleeves,
and a large black scoop-shovel bonnet with a black veil, and white slim ankles
crossed about with black tape, and very wee black slippers, like a chisel,
and she was leaning pensive on a tombstone on her right elbow, under a weeping
willow, and her other hand hanging down her side holding a white handkerchief
and a reticule, and underneath the picture it said "Shall I Never See
Thee More Alas." Another one was a young lady with her hair all combed
up straight to the top of her head, and knotted there in front of a comb like
a chair-back, and she was crying into a handkerchief and had a dead bird laying
on its back in her other hand with its heels up, and underneath the picture
it said "I Shall Never Hear Thy Sweet Chirrup More Alas." There
was one where a young lady was at a window looking up at the moon, and tears
running down her cheeks; and she had an open letter in one hand with black
sealing-wax showing on one edge of it, and she was mashing a locket with a
chain to it against her mouth, and underneath the picture it said "And
Art Thou Gone Yes Thou Art Gone Alas." These was all nice pictures, I
reckon, but I didn't somehow seem to take to them, because if ever I was down
a little, they always give me the fan-tods. Everybody was sorry she died,
because she had laid out a lot more of these pictures to do, and a body could
see by what she had done what they had lost. But I reckoned, that with her
disposition, she was having a better time in the graveyard. She was at work
on what they said was her greatest picture when she took sick, and every day
and every night it was her prayer to be allowed to live till she got it done,
but she never got the chance. It was a picture of a young woman in a long
white gown, standing on the rail of a bridge all ready to jump off, with her
hair all down her back, and looking up to the moon, with the tears running
down her face, and she had two arms folded across her breast, and two arms
stretched out in front, and two more reaching up towards the moon- and the
idea was, to see which pair would look best and then scratch out all the other
arms; but, as I was saying, she died before she got her mind made up, and
now they kept this picture over the head of the bed in her room, and every
time her birthday come they hung flowers on it. Other times it was hid with
a little curtain. The young woman in the picture had a kind of a nice sweet
face, but there was so many arms it made her look too spidery, seemed to me.

This young girl kept a scrap-book when she was alive, and used to paste obituaries
and accidents and cases of patient suffering in it out of the Presbyterian Observer,
and write poetry after them out of her own head. It was very good poetry. This
is what she wrote about a boy by the name of Stephen Dowling Bots that fell
down a well and was drownded:

Ode to Stephen Dowling Bots, Dec'd.
And did young Stephen sicken, And did young Stephen die? And did the sad hearts
thicken, And did the mourners cry?

No; such was not the fate of Young
Stephen Dowling Bots; Though sad hearts round him thickened, 'Twas not from
sickness'shots.

No whooping-cough did rack his
frame, Nor measles drear, with spots; Not these impaired the sacred name Of
Stephen Dowling Bots.

Despised love struck not with
woe That head of curly knots. Nor stomach troubles laid him low, Young Stephen
Dowling Bots.

O No. Then list with tearful eye,
Whilst I his fate do tell. His soul did from this cold world fly, By falling
down a well.

They got him out and emptied him;
Alas it was too late; His spirit was gone for to sport aloft In the realms of
the good and great.

If Emmeline Grangerford could make
poetry like that before she was fourteen, there ain't no telling what she could
a done by-and-by. Buck said she could rattle off poetry like nothing. She didn't
ever have to stop to think. He said she would slap down a line, and if she couldn't
find anything to rhyme with it she would just scratch it out and slap down another
one, and go ahead. She warn't particular, she could write about anything you
choose to give her to write about, just so it was sadful. Every time a man died,
or a woman died, or a child died, she would be on hand with her "tribute"
before he was cold. She called them tributes. The neighbors said it was the
doctor first, then Emmeline, then the undertaker- the undertaker never got in
ahead of Emmeline but once, and then she hung fire on a rhyme the dead person's
name, which was Whistler. She warn't ever the same, after that; she never complained,
but she kind of pined away and did not live long. Poor thing, many's the time
I made myself go up to the little room that used to be hers and get out her
poor old scrapbook and read in it when her pictures had been aggravating me
and I had soured on her a little. I liked all that family, dead ones and all,
and warn't going to let anything come between us. Poor Emmeline made poetry
about all the dead people when she was alive, and it didn't seem right that
there warn't nobody to make some about her, now she was gone; so I tried to
sweat out a verse or two myself, but I couldn't seem to make it go, somehow.